If you live in the eastern half of the United States, it’s possible that you, like me, are too sick to think about sex. Perhaps you clicked this bookmark out of sheer habit, from the deep recesses of a germy sickbed, and didn’t really want to be titillated. For you, I’ll begin with a couple of generalized bitches (“observations”) about life.

(1) Legislators all over America are mulling plans to regulate and tax marijuana. Just great. They finally get around to legalizing recreational drugs, and they start with the one that makes me all paranoid and antisocial. Why can’t the government ever regulate and tax a drug that I like? They could do mushrooms/peyote, which are just as healthy but give you fun hallucinations, or opium, which has that cool smell. The last time I got high on marijuana, all that happened was I became so fascinated by the movie Scrooged!, I barely noticed when all my friends went home to bed. I’m going to start a new political organization, called The Legalize Cocaine, Ecstasy and Adderall Abuse Party.

(2) Seriously, what is the effin’ deal with this illness? For those who have not experienced it up close, it’s a cold/flu with a dramatic cough. If you can imagine the domestic chaos that would ensue if the head of a family of ducks came home to find his wife making love with another duck, the resulting hellish cacophony is what it sounds like when I have to cough, every 12 seconds. It’s March! I was supposed to be rolling around nude in a verdant field! This was not the plan at all!

But enough of that; our story takes place way, way, way back, near the middle of our Winter of Discontent, on New Year’s Eve. “Chloe,” a recent college graduate, was going out to a big party with “Brad”; they’re friends, and she had agreed to act as a his wingwoman. Brad had been casually dating a young lady, and hoped this would be the night to seduce her. She would be attending the same party, and the idea was that “when she showed up, he was going to gracefully ditch me.”

Chloe was wearing a Betsey Johson dress, empire waisted, with turquoise stripes, black stockings with seams up the back (for “old-fashioned whorishness”), and black stilettos by Mossimo for Target.

(Picture of the dress coming soon!)

Back-seam stockings

Mossimo pumps

Brad came over before the party, and “we get kinda coked up.” They had bought some coke a couple of weeks before, in anticipation. They went the party, where everything went as expected. Brad’s lady friend showed up, and “they were pairing up as the night went on.”

A little while before midnight, he was like “Can I leave with her?” and Chloe was like “Dude, that was the plan.” He was wearing cowboy boots, jeans and a sable corduroy jacket. Chloe says he has “rugged good looks,” and would have gotten laid anyway.

Corduroy jacket

Cowboy boots

She decided it was time to leave the party and head to a certain bar (“The Liquor Box”) where some of her friends were. She hurried over there, arrived “literally three minutes” before the countdown to midnight, and proceeded to get “shitty drunk on free champagne.”

She was with her friends, feeling comfortable and happy. But “there’s this guy.” He was across the bar from her. “I’m making eyes at him, he’s making eyes at me.” A pale blondie, she loves “swarthy men,” and he was tall, dark and handsome (it turned out that he’s Iranian). She said to herself, “I want that dude.” Knowing what to say was not a problem because, according to her, “I’m not shy.” She introduced herself, and had a conversation in which she asked the following four questions:

— What’s your name? (“Alan”)
— What do you do? (He’s a business school student)
— Where do you live? (In town, near her)
— Do you want to go home with me? (Yes)

All the stars were aligned: “I wanted to have sex, he was there, he was hot.” Alan drove her to her house, unnerving her in the process by having the “cleanest car ever.” In the living room, they “pretended to have a conversation,” in interest of feigning decorum. But it didn’t last too long. After that, there was “lots of fuckin’,” with her on top because she “wanted to look at his perfect caramel skin.” She adds that “the sex was good, nothin’ to call your mama about.” Those were here exact words, but I think your mama does not want to hear about how you were ravished by a huge Arab, even (especially?) if it was mind-blowing. They fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning, she and Alan woke up around 10 and he drove her back to her car. She was “hung over as balls,” with a mouth tasting of “ashtray and cock,” and went back to bed immediately. When she woke up again around 5, she discovered he had left a Burberry Scarf and Kenneth Cole watch behind in his “mad dash to get out of my vagina.”

The tan one is ugly.

She considered selling these items on Craigslist, but her conscience got the better of her, and she managed to track him down on Facebook (they hadn’t traded contact information, or even last names). He came and got his accessories a few days later. Since then, they’ve seen each other out multiple times; each time, they have exchanged looks across the bar, as if to say “we shared a moment of deep personal intimacy, and now I want nothing to do with you.”

It’s also worth nothing that until shortly before this story begins, Chloe was in a relationship with a “fat science fiction fan,” and she says ever since then, the guys she’s slept with are getting hotter and hotter. She attributes this to a combination of confidence, alcohol, and the fact that “I am always willing.”

You know, loyal readers, I’m always snappin’ on people like Charles M. Blow (here, for instance) for saying that the existence of casual sex negates the sacred human values of trust, caring and integrity. Yes, this op-ed is old, but it’s still as hilarious as ever! He phoned up a university professor to help him understand the “strange phenomenon” of hooking up, which he also says is a “strange culture”! Charles M. Blow could learn a lot about the topsy-turvy new world of sex by reading this blog. But what can we learn from him? What about those times when Charles M. Blow is right — when the simple hookup that you undertook with an attitude of devil-may-care insouciance comes back to bite you in the ass, stirring up primal emotions and feelings, causing your façade of carefree sophistication to tumble all around you like a flimsy house of cards? What will you do when you find that you’ve unconscionably trifled with the finer feelings and elevated sentiments of one of God’s fellow creatures, luring him to perdition and grief with your sensual wiles, you temptress?

Charles M. Blow doesn’t actually say that will happen; he just says that hooking up “isn’t a good way to find a spouse.” But today’s story proves that it can happen. It’s hardly fair, is it? All you were trying to do was spread some joy in this cold and bitter world. But just look at Margaret’s experience.

Margaret wrote in to us a few months ago, about a relatively trouble-free fling she had with a freshman at her university. But now, things have gotten more complicated. Margaret has two friends who are also friends with each other. Of the two, she has a big crush on “Rupert.” He’s “really really sweet but also kind of sarcastic and funny, we have the same interests, he loves books and films and tea, and when I talk to him I end up forgetting my troubles.” Good grief. This is right on the verge of being twee. He studies art, and before that “he studied Animal Biology, which is awesome because I was [once] a science geek, and also, he worked in a zoo! Which sounds cool even if it actually was just shoveling poop all day.”

Meanwhile, “Gerald” has a big crush on her. But as far as she’s concerned, he’s just a friend, and with good reason. He’s a few years younger than Rupert, and lacks some of his worldly sophistication. They both study the same subject, which “can get annoying because we both have really strong opposing viewpoints and Gerald likes to debate these a lot, and I am kind of like, ‘can we just shut up and watch Indiana Jones please!'”

Thus, a classic love triangle. Then one night a couple of weeks ago, all three of them were hanging out. “I got very very drunk on cheap scotch.” Somehow she ended up alone with Gerald. They “were messing around and somehow this led to some kissing. Which then led to him leading me to his room, and then we had sex.” I didn’t get a report on whether it was fun or not, because Margaret claims the sex “wasn’t the point.” She was more eager to point out that she was wearing the very same dress she had on when she first encountered “Fresher” in the previous story. “It is not low-cut and it’s quite loose and… like a big t-shirt with pretty flowers on the neckline. Are big t-shirts sexy?” Let the people be the judge; I convinced her to send me a photo.

White dress

In the e-mail she originally sent to me, Margaret continued as follows: “Sleeping with Gerald was quite a retarded thing to do… [but] I actually consider him quite a good friend, so it’s not the most terrible thing that’s ever happened that we slept together, it’s not awkward or anything between us.”

However, a week passed before Margaret got around to sending me pictures of the dress. During that time, the situation deteriorated. She and Gerald had a serious talk: “It turns out that Gerald actually really likes me quite a lot. For me, the situation was like, ‘haha, I got drunk and slept with this guy, that was a bit silly, seeing as I like his friend,’ but now everything is awkward and horrible and I can’t do anything with Rupert because it would make Gerald cry. Gerald chose to wait ’til a few days after we had sex to tell me this as well, if I knew before, I clearly wouldn’t have slept with him (I don’t think).”

“And now that he has told me, I’m really aware of how I act around Rupert when Gerald’s there, trying not to be too flirty, and also I am really aware of how I act around Gerald, like I’m trying to be normal but I don’t want to be too nice in case he thinks that I secretly love him, but not too nasty because it’s not his fault that he is a little bit in love with me, and I still want to be his friend…. Argh! I think this has turned into a clothes that got me laid FAIL. Well, win in the sense that I did get laid, fail in the sense that my life is now hideously dramatic because of it.”

That sounds really awkward. It’s too late to do anything about it now, so let’s try to figure out what it is about this dress.

Winning outfit

Above is the full outfit, including brown tights, brown cardigan, gold belt and gold flats. Margaret finally concludes that “I think I’ve figured out the secret of the magic dress: You can see the whole of my legs. It is like I am not even wearing a skirt.” What do you guys think?

“Anita” is in her early 20s and works as a vintage clothing seller. (She requested this pseudonym; it’s kind of weird for me because my mom is named Anita, but I was like “okay.”) I talked to her the other night, and she told me about a fateful series of events that took place about six months ago — on what I would call a “memorable night,” except that, as with many of the people I talk to, she only remembers about half of it.

Anita was single at the time, although casually dating several guys. (She’s very petite and small in stature! Does this ever happen to taller women?) Her ex-boyfriend had a friend that she was trying to be buddies with; she saw him around a lot or whatever, and she had suggested that they should hang out some time. She wasn’t trying to have it off with him, though; she just thought he was a fun guy.

The first time she suggested getting together, he didn’t have time. Then a few nights later, he was having people over to his apartment, and he called her to say “come over, let’s hang out.” She showed up wearing cowboy boots, skinny Levi’s jeans, and an 80s concert t-shirt.

Cowboy boots

She wouldn’t tell me what the 80’s concert was, apparently on the grounds that it would be too identifying (?). However, RANT OF THE DAY: Can people please shut the hell up about “80’s music”? When anyone uses this phrase, as far as I can tell, they seem to be talking about a particular style of glossy synthesizer pop music that was popular in that decade. Like, Wham! and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Spandau Ballet and whatever the fuck. WARNING, CHALLENGING OPINION ALERT, that style of music totally sucks. It’s crappy and overproduced, plus the drums sound too “wet.” Time spent talking about “80’s music” is wasted time that could have been employed discussing an actual good band! Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds put out like ten records in the 80’s,so if you’re going to fetishize a decade, why don’t you talk about them? Talk about Tom Waits or something. Also, I hate the saxophone solo in “Careless Whispers.” Seriously, “80’s music” needs to suck my balls. Here are some concert t-shirts from the nineteen-eighties that I would condone wearing.

Flipper still rules

Butthole Surfers

Anita’s new friend “Gibby” had a bunch of his dudes over, watching episodes of The Office (American version). She brought over a “huge bottle of Gentleman Jack” and proceeded to drink it straight up. Gibby was drinking the whiskey too, I think. Time passed. At one point, Gibby went into the kitchen to get another drink, and she went with him. She kissed him and they started making out. She hadn’t ever been interested in him before, and attributes what happened to beer goggles (“Gentleman Jack spectacles”?).

They went back out into the living room and acted normal around Gibby’s friends, as one does. Then eventually, he decided to go to bed, and told her, “come in there when you’re ready.” So that’s what she did — she went into his bedroom, and they had sex. She says “it was a success.”

It is unclear what all the other dudes were doing while this was going on; maybe they had gone home. This part of the story is kind of weird. And what makes it even odder is, Anita revealed that it was still only 10 p.m. when they got done having sex! I was confused by this at first, because I couldn’t understand why Gibby went to bed so early. Now I think I know the reason, though. I think that “going to bed” was just a ploy he used to get laid. I know, right? Can you imagine? What kind of man would do such a thing? Shocking, but in any case, Anita had no urge to sleep over there. “I was just done, and then I left.”

She went home and changed clothes, into a floral sundress, with the same boots and no underwear.

Floral sundress

Forever 21 dress

She phoned up some good friends and they told her they were at a popular local billiard hall, “Tight Pocket Billiards.” She drove over, joined them, and started drinking again. It was there that she met “Charlie,” a friend of her friends who was partying with them. When she first spotted him, she mistook him for someone she had met before, so she was like “hey, you’re Kurt.” He was like “no,” but they struck up a conversation.

Shortly thereafter, she “asked him to take me home.” It struck me that this story was missing the part where the two folks go from shaking hands to going home to fuck. “What did you talk about?”, I asked. She said they didn’t talk much, and that it was basically a matter of “chemistry” between them. Furthermore, “when you have sex, you want more.”

And so it came to pass that they went to his apartment and had the “best sex ever.” Chemistry doesn’t lie! A surprising fact about this interview is that Charlie was there while I was conducting it (we were at a fashion party). He had been talking to someone else, but wandered over at this point. Anita kept emphasizing that it was “seriously, the best sex ever.” Charlie seemed more pleased than otherwise to be associated with an activity like this. He says that when they met, he was wearing a black Nirvana t-shirt, probably with jeans and Pumas.

Vintage shirt

Charlie didn’t call her back for two weeks after that, but she says they are now “best friends” who also have great sex. Looking at my archives, this has happened before, that someone had better luck when they went out for the second time in one night. I mentioned it to Georgiana, and she thinks it is because of, quote, “pheromones.” You leave the house all smeared with your own sex pheromones, and you attract someone whose body chemicals and hormones are all matched up with yours. Right?

Today’s post may be a bit less work-safe than usual, if your work objects to your having sexual words on your computer screen.

“Philia” is Ariana‘s friend, and it was Ariana who told her that “when you’re older you’ll understand, sometimes you have sex entirely for the anecdotal value.” That’s what she did last Halloween. “Let me preface this by saying that Halloween in New York City is absolutely terrifying. Not in a “spooky” kind of way,” but because of the drunken crowds. “It’s essentially like being at the casting call for extras in a low budget porno except plus body paint and masks.”

Last year she got dressed up “as ‘Sloth’ from the Seven Deadly Sins (yeah , totally the sexiest one, thanks friends).” She was wearing “a grey and white slip from Urban Outfitters, some fishnet tights, also Urban Outfitters, and depending on which point in the night you’re talking about, a bra and thong.”

UO Slip

UO Fishnets

She and the other Deadly Sins headed out to the Halloween Parade, a “massive orgy of intoxication and drag.” Philia is probably quite a few yours younger than me, but I’m totally feeling her cranky, obstreperous attitude in this part of the story: “After several minutes I decided that this just wasn’t going to work for me. As it turns out, I hate people…who knew?” She needed to escape for her friends’ “brewing drama,” and she had a clever backup plan. She had exchanged numbers with a dude named “Miles” at a bar in Union Square a couple of weeks previously. They met through mutual friends or something, and he was pretty hot, with brown hair and a runner’s body.

She phoned him up and “we met at the Fat Cat on Christopher Street in the West Village (an interesting crowd there — including a guy dressed as a scuba diver witha tank full of alcohol drinking it out of a scuba mouthpiece).” HEY, THAT IS A GREAT IDEA. Not just for Halloween, though.

“So Miles and I had a few drinks and eventually I decided to bring him back to my place (hey, it was Halloween, I was creating a memory, okay?).” How come chicks always use that as an excuse for sleeping with some guy? You don’t even need an excuse, but if you did, I think you should use the Andrew Marvell “To His Coy Mistress” “fear of death” rationale. “Oh, I had to sleep with him, I realized that all my quaint honor’s gonna end up turned to dust anyway! He was hot, and besides, all around me lie deserts of vast eternity.” The end result is the same, but it’s a classier line of argument. When they returned to the dorm, her roommate Ariana was there, and rather than languishing in time’s slow-chapp’d power, she was besporting herself with a young swain, “her usual frat-boy hookup.”

Sexiled! “I wasn’t about to let Halloween get me down, so we moved to the couch and proceeded to make out there.” Before things proceeded further, “my phone rang. I answered and it was my best friend (and also gayest friend, and also most wasted friend) “Marcus” on the other line.

“I’m on my way over. I’m here. I’m here.”

“Paul, you can’t just show up without telling me, I’ve got somebody here.”

“OHHH REALLYY?!” “Yes, really,” but “at this point Paul broke into tears. Seriously.”

“Paul, are you sad?” “MAYBE???”

“I sighed, but hey, we’d been best friends since we were 10, so I figured, bros before hos, as it were.”

“Okay Paul. If you’re sad of course you can come over.” Marcus wasn’t really on his way, though, let alone “here” — I suppose he was just being dramatic. Once Philia found this out, she decided to have sex with Miles while she waited. But “the sex did not go well… I gave him a blowjob first and he made me stop because he was going to come, so I was like ‘well… want to have sex?’ and he said ‘sure, but it might be embarrassingly short.'” Question: If he was going to do a bad job fucking her, what was the point of stopping the blowjob? Why didn’t he just come in her mouth? As long as I live, I will never understand people.

In Philia’s words, “I figured, how short can it be? We started and about 25 seconds in (yes literally), he was like ‘maybe i should just come now and then we can have sex later’… I said, innocently enough, ‘sure, i come easily {!} so just let me know when you’re going to and I’ll come with you’…. Sure enough that was enough to set him off so he yanked off the condom and came all over me.” HEH! How inconsiderate. Gentleman, I learned a tip about this from reading Ron Jeremy’s autobiography. In this wonderful book, Mr. Jeremy advises that if you feel you are going to ejaculat too early, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break by switching to a different type of sex act, getting up to go make a sandwich, or even running your dick under cold water! I’m sure the lady (or whatever) would appreciate it. There are so many reasons to read Ron Jeremy’s memoirs, that’s barely even scratching the surface.

RJ in younger, but no less hirsute, time

Their idea was to wait a while and have sex again, but then Marcus called to to say he was finally “here.” He didn’t have ID, “so I left Miles in bed and went downstairs to retrieve my wasted friend. As I came out of the elevators I saw my favorite guard, Demos, laughing hysterically and just pointing to the bathroom.”

“A few minutes later Marcus stumbled out. He was dressed as an Indian. No, not the Native American kind.”

“There he was, completely out of his mind wasted, dressed in only a vest, a scarf wrapped around his head, a pair of gypsy pants and with a big red dot on his forehead. Think Aladdin, but gayer and less politically correct.”

“We got into the elevator where we met up with Ariana, who was now drunk, stoned, and had what I’d like to refer to politely as ‘sex hair.’ Once we got into my room it became clear that Marcus wasn’t in fact that sad, and had instead arranged to hook up with one of our mutual friends… at my place. Yep, he’d invited someone over for himself…to my place.”

“And yes… he showed up.” About half an hour later “Sextus (dressed as ‘Pride’ — a.k.a. himself) and Titus (dressed as Donkey Kong) stumbled into my room.” She tried to warn them there was a guy sleeping in her bed. Then yet another drunken, hysterical friend, “Livia,” showed up. Philia got to work “pulling Livia’s clothes back on as she cried, while the boys talked and laughed at how drunk Miles was. I suddenly heard a loud gay shriek coming from the direction of my bedroom. It was Titus, running out, in his boxers:”

“PHILIA! THERE’S A MAN IN YOUR BED!!”

“Yeah… I know.”

“HE ASKED IF I WAS MARCUS AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO SO I JUST RAN!”

“Titus was pretty much under the impression that I had ‘set something up’ for Paul in my room… for the rest of the night.” This story is way crazier than I even noticed at first. Who gets suspected of being a procuress, in this day and age? Total Roman sex comedy vibe, which is why I’ve borrowed some of the names from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It doesn’t end there, either. She explained the situation, but “about an hour passes, and suddenly I hear yet another distinct gay shriek as MARCUS comes running from my room:”

“PHILIA! THERE’S A MAN IN YOUR BED!!!”

“He’d discovered this upon crawling into bed attempting to fall asleep. Yeah, my gay best friend crawled into bed with the guy I had just slept with. Awkward? Oh no, not at all.”

However awkward this situation was for Philia, “it could never be as embarrassing as Marcus’s walk of shame the next morning. The Gay Politically Incorrect Indian walking by actual Indians back to his actually Indian roommate and it dawning on him that he had spent his entire night prior to coming to my place hanging out with two actual Indians is really enough payback for me.”

Meanwhile, Philia’s hookup “was very forgiving of the fact that not one but two gay guys had prevented me from sleeping with him and then attempted to sleep with him themselves in the course of his one night stay.” She never saw him again, though. By the time their schedules matched up, “I’d gotten into a relationship with someone I’ve known since high school and had been seeing over the summer. We’ve been dating about two months now and it’s going great — Marcus hasn’t tried to sleep with him and the sex is amazing (and even lasts long enough for me to realize we’re having sex!).” Ouch, that is a harsh snap.

— Encouragingly, Barack Obama agrees with me on another important issue. He spoke a few days ago, in reference to Bill Richardson, on the attractiveness of beards. Is he never wrong?

Lots of people besides Barack and me like to give out fashion tips, though. One of them is “Claudette,” who sent me an e-mail with some suggestions for what to wear on a date “if [its] entire purpose is to have sex” — I like to call this “indoor dating.” We first heard from Claudette in September; she described herself as plain in appearance, yet had a steamy several-night stand with her ideal man. Then he proceeded to break her heart, or something, by being too crazy for a relationship.

In the intervening time, she’s been working on getting over “Brooklyn” (so called because that is where he lives). Going well? “Proceeding poorly, thanks for asking.” Not for any lack of effort on her part, though. Claudette pursued the classic post-breakup stratagems of “crying silently at my desk at work, crying to any friend who would listen, crying myself to sleep every night for three weeks straight, and changing up the routine by occasionally drinking myself into a stupor.”

Back in the day, when I was coming up, it would have been customary for a young lady to add some ice cream to this regimen. But technology is changing the way we live our lives! For example, in the Renaissance, before those cranks that make ice cream were invented, a spurned woman didn’t even have ice cream to console herself with; back then, if you wanted a simple dessert, you had to spend hours boiling figs, rosewater and sugar into a syrupy paste. If you wanted pizza, you had to start with curds. What Claudette had in mind, though, was even better than pizza and ice cream. She reasoned to herself as follows:

“If one dude wanted to fuck me, maybe others do.

“Maybe I should try fucking him out of my system.”

Thanks to today’s modern internet technology, it was fairly efficient to do this. “Fucking him out of my system was a two-pronged and simultaneous attack. (In retrospect, I have no idea where I got the mental, physical, and emotional energy to do this–I was tremendously depressed.) My first method of fucking Brooklyn out of my system was to trawl Casual Encounters. I don’t recommend it — you never know what you’re going to get. My second method of fucking Brooklyn out of my system was to create a profile on an ‘adult personals’ site. This was the better approach. Low pressure, low time commitment, the guys fight for your attention as opposed to the other way around.”

“I’ll boast a little here and say that though each method has its drawbacks, through trial and error I now have two numbers in my phone right now that I could call and say, “What are you doing tonight? Me? OK, great. See you at 10.” As someone who is ‘fat, frumpy, and plain,’ if you had told me a year ago that that would be the case, I would have told you you were out of your damn mind.”

As Claudette points out, your clothes have less work to do in getting you laid in these circumstances: “You don’t really have to think about putting the goods on display to catch a random person’s attention.” But tarting yourself up in a subtle way “helps to get the fella in the mood.” I once referred to my friend Isaac in these pages as an “elder statesman of pussy”; Claudette apparently now fancies herself a sort of elder states(wo)man of penis. She offers up some advice on the foolproof outfit for indoor dating:

— Black cotton spanky panties (you know, those boy short type things, but I have a big ass and they show off the bottom curve of my butt quite nicely)

Victoria's Secret boyshorts (they have them in black, too)

— Hot pink patent peep toe Mary Janes from J.Crew

J. Crew pink patent mary janes

The rationale is as follows: “Both dresses are sexy, but not SO sexy that to wear them in daylight screams ‘walk of shame. I could wear either to the office or out with a friend for brunch the next day if it came to it. Men particularly seem to like untying the wrap dress and whipping it off me, like tearing the wrapping off a present. Plus both dresses can go in the washer, in case anything spills on them.” LOL, what would spill on them? “The undies coordinate but aren’t matchy-matchy, and the shoes are fun, whimsical, and dudes seem to get off on the naughty schoolgirl aspect of the Mary Janes.”

People loved the story I posted about Georgiana and her black, thigh-high suede boots. They also love it when I post pictures of “fit girls,” as I found out from reading Daily Sport. If you enjoy both those things, you are my base, and will want to see this recent post on Street Boners. Don’t look at it at work, though!

“Margaret” recently graduated from a small arts college in the southwest of England. She’s currently teaching, and plans to go to Bali next year to study gamelan. The summer after college ended, she moved back to her college town. “I still have friends at the college, including some guys who are in a band. This band played at the college during Freshers’ Week this term, and I went along with another friend (“Abby”) to see them play.” She goes on to ask “do you have Freshers’ Week in the U.S.?”, but I think it’s just the same thing as Orientation.

She was wearing “a really short white dress with short sleeves and pretty embroidered flowers around the neckline, a black and silver waist belt with the buckle shaped like 2 swallows, a black cardigan, black opaque tights, and silver flats.”

White minidress

Black cashmere cardigan

Silver flats

Margaret felt odd being an alumna and hanging out with a bunch of current students; “this was the first time I’d been back to this pub or on campus at all since our emotional goodbye party at the end of my last term there.” Also, “I found that I knew a really small number of people at the pub that night.” She couldn’t talk to her friends in the band, because they were performing most of the night, and her friend was busy reminiscing with a hometown friend she had encountered.

“I was feeling at a bit of a loose end. I did the only thing I could to alleviate all my feelings of weirdness and got wrecked. And when I get wrecked, I get quite… kissy. So I was wandering around trying to find someone I knew, and while I was doing this I looked over at Abby, who had started making out with this guy she knew from home (apparently she had a big crush on him when she was younger, but he knocked her back! And they were chatting about this, and he clearly came to the conclusion he was wrong).”

Our heroine followed suit: “What happened next was I grabbed the nearest person I sort of recognised, who happened to be a fresher who I had met briefly earlier that evening. I may have started talking to him, or I may have simply grabbed him and started kissing him. I remember thinking that it was fortunate he was walking past, because he’s really tall and so am I, so I tower above most boys I know. We spent the next hour or so kissing in front of the pub (I assume, I can’t really remember this part of the night).”

After Abby got a taxi home, “I decided to stay over in Fresher’s room (because I had been watching a lot of Sex and the City those past weeks, and decided it was the thing to do).” Young people are so suggestible. It is fortunate that the things popular culture encourages them to do are, for the most part, benign. A hundred years ago, recent college grads were probably all like, “So I decided to go civilize Africa — I had been reading a lot of Joseph Conrad that week, and it seemed like the thing to do.”

“Although we didn’t have sex, we had an entertaining night together, mainly with him enthusiastically going down on me. I then spent a really long time telling him how I was really old (I’m not, just he’s quite young, like 19) and how it was weird that I was an ex-student but I was still hanging around college (it wasn’t that weird) and that I used to live in the same halls of residence that he does (that was a bit weird).”

This boy was “quite nice,” and his actions had disproven the Teuterian stereotype that young dudes are all inconsiderate lovers. However, she didn’t want to keep messing around with him “because he had just started university and I didn’t really want to be a part of that, I’d done the whole student thing already. So I bumped into him a couple more times at the pub, and we talked a bit but nothing else really happened til last week. I went up to the pub again to see another friend who is still a student, and she knows some people in Fresher’s halls, so I ended up talking to him and some others in his room.”

“We then went into the kitchen to make coffee, and for some reason he was sucking on a lollipop. So, being a little drunk again, I started flirtatiously pulling the lolly out of his mouth and putting it in mine, which inevitably ended up with us kissing again, which we carried on doing until someone walked in the kitchen and busted us.” These college hookup stories are always so complicated, like “we went to make out in my dorm room, but there were already other people making out there, so we decided to go to his room, but on the way there we ran into the drug dealer, and we had to go to the ATM to get money to buy weed, and then after we got stoned, we all decided to go to a nightclub, but we waited half an hour and our taxi never came, so {etc., etc.}.” They’re like these ridiculous shaggy dog stories, where you have to go to twelve different locations just to get some cock.

Or not, as in this case: “We went back and rejoined the people in his room, carried on talking, and that night I decided I didn’t want to stay with him, I would prefer to go home and sleep in my own bed. I was pretty tired, and I think had some stuff to do the next morning or something.” She was wearing a black miniskirt. “There seems to be a correlation between the nights I wear short skirts and the nights I get laid.”

The next night she went to a party/event thing on campus, wearing “a HOT short bright red dress with an empire waist and appliqued roses all over the chest, the same black cropped cardigan from the night before, a skinny black belt round my waist, and red red lipstick. I was proud of this outfit.”

Red empire-waist minidress

Red and gray vintage Caroline Herrera minidress

The chaste relations between her and Fresher couldn’t last long; “I never really think of him except for when I am drunk, when I find him really really attractive and all I want to do is jump him.” There were bands and DJs at this thing, “so I spent most of the evening dancing, and eventually saw the boy and as I predicted, started kissing him again. We went back to his room at the end of the night, and this time we did have sex, but I refrained from talking about how weird/old I was.”

“This time the walk of shame in the morning was pretty bad, I got up to pee in the morning so just pulled my dress on without my underwear, and then when I went to go home, I couldn’t be bothered with taking the dress off again to put my bra on, so I just walked out with my bra in my hand. And opened the door to the WHOLE of the floor, who were going to the shops and were just about to ask my Fresher if he wanted anything. I was like, hi, guys… here’s my bra.”

Will it happen again? “I think the No Drama Obama way would be to not pursue this. However, I am fairly sure that next time the both of us are in the same place at the same time and alcohol is involved, I’ll end up getting in his bed again. Probably wearing black tights and a short skirt.”

I always want to keep this website topical, so you’re a reader in a pro-Obama country (United States, Kenya, Indonesia, etc.) and you get laid on election night, tell me about it. I know personally, for a fact, that people were having victory sex that night. (I know this because I read it on the internet.)

“Rachel” is a university student living in Brisbane, Australia. She describes her motive in writing in to me thus: “I recently had a bit of a roller-coaster ride of a non-relationship with this guy, am currently at the stage of hating every fibre of his being, and have decided that to write it down would be therapeutic.” Actually, I think that’s what happened with most of the sad bastards who write in to me.

Rachel’s story begins when “I met this guy… I’ll just say that he has one of those dreamy names that’s always given to sexy fictional characters and that tends to make girls swoon.” I will call him Glenn. “I met him because we worked at the same restaurant for a few months. I was on pretty good terms with lots of the other people there, but didn’t know him too well – until a party at one of the other peoples’ houses.” Rachel had found at that Glenn was leaving the job soon, and she went to the co-worker party because “I kind of liked him.”

“I was at work that evening, and some people there convinced me to quickly go home, change and meet them to share a taxi once our shift was done. The problem: WHAT TO WEAR? You see, it was a costume party! After a bit of brainstorming, it turned out one of the boys in the kitchen had a sailor hat he could lend me.”

Sailor's cap

“Upon getting home, I changed into a CUTE little dress – bold blue and white stripes, halter neck, kinda flared skirt ending just above the knee. Combined with a denim jacket, flat gold sandals and (of course) the hat, I made a kick-arse sailor. So I met up with my friends and made it to the house party on the other side of the city by 11 p.m.”

Blue and white striped dress

Wrangler denim jacket

Gold sandals

Many of the other guests weren’t even in costume, and she easily outclassed them. “I spent most of my time at the party talking to/flirting with Glenn (and drinking), and by my fourth drink was sitting on his lap (of course). When he whispered all deep-voiced in my ear ‘meet me outside in 30 seconds,’ I sure knew what was coming. Glenn and I went for a ‘walk’ and ended up making out in the park across the road from the party. Can I just mention that it was the middle of winter and I was wearing a short dress, so despite the jacket I was FREEZING. It detracted from the fun somewhat.”

“After at a guess an hour of that, I saw a cab pull up outside the house and knew it was the one meant to be taking me alllll the way back home with the other people who live near me. Glenn was trying to get me to go back to his place, which was just around the corner and apparently had plenty of blankets to warm me up.” I would probably accept an offer like this — it’s cold in my house right now — but she declined. “He also used the somewhat flawed ‘what if I never see you again’ argument. Dude, I know you’re leaving the job, but we live in the same city and I have an email address and a phone.”

On the way home, Rachel sat “in dazed silence mulling over the events of the evening.” She ended up sleeping on a friend’s floor, and since her dress “made shitty winter pyjamas, I just about froze to death.” Probably, this was God’s punishment on her for turning down free sex and blankets. If that’s the case, there was more persecution to come. Rachel waited for her hot guy to contact her, but days and then weeks passed, and he didn’t call. He did, however, waste her time with some lukewarm Facebook messaging.

After a few weeks of this, she concluded he wasn’t really interested, she concluded that he wasn’t really interested, so “when I was asked out by another friend (also a friend of Glenn’s) I didn’t see any reason to say no. This resulted in Glenn getting really angry/stroppy at me and his friend, because apparently despite not showing further interest in me and telling his friend that nothing was happening, he was *actually* just waiting for an opportunity or something.” What a dork. He was “sending me long angsty messages about how he had thought I was out of his league and wanted me to give him another shot (causing me much stress and guilt and tears).” She felt bad, and so she “decided I had made a terrible mistake and that I really liked Glenn. I decided the best option was to stay friends with the other guy rather than date him.”

When she saw Glenn next, she was out drinking with friends, “wearing a satin, cream-coloured dress with a colourful flower pattern around the hem and a gold belt around my waist, over black opaque tights, with black lace-up ankle boots.”

She was “extremely drunk (and thus emotional). We had a talk, which I can remember little of as I have rarely been as drunk as I was that night. The talking led to reconciliation making out, at which point I decided it would be a good idea to hop in a cab and go home with him.” “*Facepalm*”, she adds, in an eloquent display of self-reproach, she adds. But how could she have known? “I kind of expected that after the whole fuss he kicked up when the other guy asked me out, he would actually… want to be involved with me himself.”

Instead, they returned to their pattern of pointless Facebook contact. “When I was particularly friendly or showed interest, he would tend to be fairly dismissive and make me feel like an idiot. For a few weeks a pattern continued of seeing him with mutual friends when drinking and making out, but that fizzled out too.”

How are we to describe a dude like this? Rachel writes that “maybe asshole is being a little harsh – but I was pretty mad that he was such a drama queen… only to get what he wanted and then be interested in nothing more than the occasional hook-up.” Hmmm. “Asshole” may be the mot juste. Glenn, however, is the one who actually has cause for regret. Rachel points out that her outfits at the time were “fantastically cute. And that’s what matters.”